Chapter One
I can’t believe I ever subscribed to the idea that a disaster meant I could choose who I wanted to be.
My life has been a disaster for a year, and the last person I’d choose to be is the one chugging north on the Oceans to Peaks Highway, one eye on the gas gauge, one hand on the dashboard to encourage my ancient Honda.
“Honey. We’re getting killed out here. I think those cyclists are going to pass us.
” Honey’s almost as old as I am—thirty-three—and very close to exceeding my repair skills, unless I take up welding in my nonexistent spare time.
She needs an emotional support person on the hills.
Unfortunately, she got me, and the only emotion I have anymore is anger.
Burnout , my therapist called it, before I ran out of money and stopped seeing her. If that’s what we’re calling simultaneously losing your profession, your reputation, and your ability to make a living in one of Canada’s most expensive places, then sure.
Half an hour from Grey Tusk, the luxe mountain playground beloved by the world’s wealthiest people, the Pendleton Valley unrolls like green shag carpet, the fertile farmland hemmed in by mountains in every direction.
A few minutes north of Pendleton, I spot the landmarks Liz gave me: two big gray rocks on the left, then a tree that looks like a moose on the right.
I slow down—not by much; poor Honey—and turn onto a dirt track nearly grown over with rainforest understory: maidenhair ferns, skunk cabbage, moss in every shade from emerald to deep gold.
These abandoned logging roads crisscross the foothills everywhere, mostly maintained by locals who use them for hiking, hunting, and access to the Pendle River system.
This one’s old; cedar and birch trees have grown into a dense canopy that nearly closes out the sky.
Leafy arms reach into the one-lane track to squeak across Honey’s panels.
Behind me, a plume of pale dust swirls, a reminder that everything in this valley comes from the river: the fine, silty soil, the rich agricultural land, the abundance of life blossoming in our little microclimate.
We’ve got the mountain animals Canada’s famous for, like grizzlies, cougars, and wolverines—the forty-pound weasel type, not the Hugh Jackman type, but they sound impressive.
Tourists like the big, flashy fauna, but when I used to spend time in the wilderness, I preferred the small things.
You can find a dozen rare types of salamander and even a tiny species of boa constrictor, if you don’t think size means everything.
After ten minutes of bumping over rocks and edging past sawn-up windfall trees, I reach a tidy clearing marked with logs to indicate the parking spaces. I pat the dash. “Screw the haters, Honey. We made it in one pi—Ahhh!”
I stomp the brakes reflexively, and Honey’s wheels skid a little on the loose gravel.
McHuge. Or at least McHuge in vehicular form.
I mean, I knew he’d be here. I’m interviewing for a job with him. It’s just unsettling to be confronted with a van that couldn’t possibly belong to anyone else, unless the Scooby-Doo gang works here.
Okay, it’s not an exact replica of the Mystery Machine.
But what else can you call a multipassenger van painted the glossy summer cream of vanilla soft serve, accented with a vintage surf-style red-orange-yellow stripe?
There’s a stylized sunset on the rear doors, captioned with loopy brown script: KEEP ON KEEPIN’ ON .
It looks like it was designed by a gray-ponytailed boomer who had one too many light beers while marinating in a Beach Boys megamix.
A round logo in the aggressively plain style you’d see at crunchy, expensive natural food stores decorates the rear sliding door.
THE LOVE BOAT .
This is what my life has come to.
But I still have two things in this world I love: my friend Liz and this beautiful, wild part of Canada. After losing everything else I used to care about, I’d do anything to keep them.
Even this.
I wait for the road dust to settle, then roll down my window, open the door using the still-functional outside handle, and step into the parking lot.
I’m heading to work after this and I need to stay clean—Grey Tusk tourists don’t tip when your clothes aren’t spotless.
I’ve tried a lot of different outfits in a year of working gig jobs, and this one sends me home with the most cash in hand: a fitted short-sleeved black button-down, slim black pants cut an inch above my ankle bone, and vegan leather oxfords in black and white.
Black suspenders make a nice triangular gap between my waist and my padded bra.
My undercut is freshly touched up with my secondhand trimmers, my hair sprayed into a pouf that filters any smile into a wicked smirk.
I look like the last person who should be working at a whitewater-canoeing-slash-relationship-therapy start-up. Then again, McHuge doesn’t check a lot of boxes on the “stereotypical doctor of psychology” list, with his braided beard and California yoga teacher vocabulary.
No one’s here to greet me except an enormous king shepherd dog who pops her head out of the van’s open sliding door. She’s big enough to bite me in half, and I respect that. God knows I’d like to bite a few people from time to time.
The dog looks me up and down, decides I’m not worth the effort, and curls back up on a towel spread across one of the vinyl bench seats.
It’s fine. Animals don’t like Katniss Everdeen, either.
I head along a path toward the river, stopping when I reach a clearing with a panoramic view of what Liz’s husband, Tobin—also McHuge’s business partner—called “base camp.” It used to be part of a rustic family compound, but fewer people care to go without electricity and running water on their vacation these days, so Tobin and McHuge were able to secure prime waterfront for their don’t-get-divorced summer camp.
I shouldn’t make fun of it, I suppose. Last year McHuge published a self-help book that allegedly saved Liz and Tobin’s marriage and made a few bestseller lists.
Mostly the Canadian ones, but it’s not nothing.
Liz has been on me to read it, but I’m not interested in learning to get along with the people who’ve disappointed me.
To my left, there’s an old cabin, planks silvered by age and rain, with a staircase of bright new cedar and a sign reading COOKHOUSE: STAFF ONLY .
Not far away, on the edge of a wide sandy path leading to the river, is a smaller shed, its barn-style doors thrown open to reveal a pair of weathered sawhorses and a shelf crowded with marine maintenance products.
A modest lawn surrounds a screened-in pavilion labeled DINING HALL / STUDIO ; up the hillside is an open-air wash station next to a broad-planked outdoor shower stall.
Beside that is a low, square wooden building with a bright aluminum chimney. A sauna, unless I miss my guess.
The far end of the clearing obviously used to be a volleyball or badminton area, with those two tall poles that beg for a net. The nearer end features a river-stone firepit surrounded by a dozen thick, round log stools.
If there are sing-alongs, I’m calling in sick.
Fronting the calm expanse of the river, five white canvas castles, practically big tops, rise on airy platforms of the same red cedar as the cookhouse stairs. Smart: clients want the river view, but not the groundwater seeping through the floor.
And there, at the river’s edge, a tall, broad figure looks out over the water toward the tree-lined mountains and decommissioned railway tracks on the opposite shore. On closer inspection, he’s standing in the river, quick-dry cargo pants rolled up to midshin.
It’s either a stirring portrait of Man in Nature or a dude who’s two horns and a helmet short of a viral Viking video series.
Or it’s my prospective boss and the man I’ve been dodging ever since the best, worst hookup of our times.
The memory brings a sick flush to my cheeks.
We were so goddamn good together, and so catastrophically bad.
I’ve spoken to him twice since then—once at an improv show, once serving on a volunteer search crew.
Both times, I vowed not to come near him ever again.
A year later the first sip of morning tea still tastes like him.
I want to turn around, put Honey’s pedal to the floor, and run back to the delivery job that pays almost enough to keep me in ramen noodles and out of student loan bankruptcy.
Keep my head in the sand till the car I can’t afford to replace breaks down for the last time.
Then I’ll finally have no viable job prospects in Grey Tusk’s bizarre economy, where the middle class is officially missing.
I’ll have to leave Grey Tusk and Liz. Lose the only two things I’ve managed to hold on to during the total implosion of my life.
I’m angry even thinking about it, but better fuming than frightened.
When I worked in the emergency department of Grey Tusk General Hospital, getting mad made me smarter and stronger.
There’s nothing like a burst of furious last-ditch CPR interspersed with yelling to revive a stubbornly arrested heart, or a heartfelt curse to finally pop an IV into an elusive vein.
Anger makes you want to throw things, and problems need you to throw things at them, so they pair well.
But there are no solutions to throw at my finances, except one. It means a whole summer next to McHuge, who I usually try not to come within talking distance of. Ten weeks of being a camp doctor, which puts a stethoscope-shaped rock in my stomach.
I assess the soft deep sand leading to the shore, then pull off one oxford at a time and balance them on a log with my socks tucked inside. McHuge is already a piece of grit in my metaphorical shoe, rubbing me wrong with every step. No need to add real sand to the equation, too.